


those who favour fire

by clytemnestras



Category: The Wicked + The Divine
Genre: F/F, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-22
Updated: 2019-09-22
Packaged: 2020-10-25 23:24:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,434
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20732438
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/clytemnestras/pseuds/clytemnestras
Summary: You never said enough& I never said no, to you.





	those who favour fire

**Author's Note:**

  * For [nereid](https://archiveofourown.org/users/nereid/gifts).

> spoilers for the last arc

So it's like this:

Laura is a body filled up with shallow breath and Luci is lying just by taking up space, just by occupying her own body in her thin white duke suit, behind glass. She smiles, and that's true, maybe, but only if it's because Laura is something to hunger for, and not just because she's talking to her in the slit of the cell, fingers touching through cold metal.

Touching something that could kill her, not with a snap, or a look, or anything divinely made, just by happenstance - say, like a smirk just for her - Laura's heart will burn up and away, hollowed out from the inside like a dying star.

So it's like this:

Luci says you don't know when to quit, and Laura thinks of the anti-smoking videos they made her watch in PSHE, where a girl falls asleep with a half-lit cigarette and sets her bed on fire.

So it's like this:

Being around Luci makes her feel starving for something hot and full and half-drunk on latent divinity and Laura bites her lip across the prison glass. "Tell me to stop coming and I will."

Luci twitches an eyebrow, and half smirks. "It's more fun when you know it's a bad idea and you keep showing up anyway."

  
*

She wonders sometimes how far the reach of divinity spreads. Whether this filthy day-lit fantasy is her own or something extended to her like a chalice to drink from.

Luci is the face of Laura's want, for power, for sex, for _glory-hunger-fame-artistry-absolution,_ staring up at her from the edge of her bed. She is in so many ways Laura's original sin.

Cliché is only good for something when you can force yourself to fit the mold. She doesn't bite an apple nor swallow pomegranate seeds but she bites her own wrist to cover up the sounds of this, of herself, the shameful face of her teenage obsession.

It's easy then, to picture the red eyes buzzing on the edge of her vision, spot of demonic light crawling along her body in the din of her bedroom, door shut, curtains drawn. Luci glowed onstage, savage and frenetic but singularly focused. Her shows were not performances but mass possessions. Laura bites her lip as her fingers make an altar out of her own body. Her fingernails draw sigils, meandering but purposeful things, something that makes her body feel like something other than itself. In her mind Luci growls, nothing like singing, everything like sex.

The gig plays out in Laura's mind, meeting her own tempo. She shivers as Luci licks the microphone stand, thumb rubbing tight circles on her clit. She writhes to the beat of the song, shivering on half-gasped hallelujahs, and she dangles in the precipice, teeth sunken into her left bicep as her hips try to meet her hands and Luci, on the darkened stage throws her head back in exaltation and sinks into the crowd like a stone.

She thinks of that expression, that glorious finale, when she dresses to go the prison, hair mused and smelling like something filthy. Laura wears her sins as proof of worthiness, of worship.

  
*

  
So it's like this:

Luci is dead, and Laura is a pale shadow of what her divinity used to be.

*

  
She's in hell, that's the tune, rolled her body in the winter dark, the dirt, the abyss sunken below.

It won't be spring for a very long time.

Laura aligns herself with all the things she thought were above her, only now they're underneath.

She aligns her hips with Baphomet's, literally pins him beneath her, with her thighs, with her stare. She fucks him like he's her biggest fan and she's only glowing on the strength of his applause. If he worships her then all the better. Maybe then all of this was worth something.

She arches above him, like the sky, and maybe Amerterasu would have been better than this, to fuck the heavens themselves, to be above the sun. He kisses her collarbone tenderly before throwing himself back and shuddering and she smooths the hair off of his forehead because it's something to do with her hands.

When she rolls off she feels around for her cigarettes, and clicks her fingers into flames in the dark.

"You lied to me," she whispers, exhaling white smoke into the din. "You did make me your demon."

Baphomet's eyebrows crease as he leans up, head cradled in his pale palm.

"Nevermind," she says, passing him the Pall Mall, and watching the exhale release in small shudders of regret. She gets it. She regrets a lot of things, but this, so far, isn't one of them. She resolves to regret him when she has anything else to hold onto.

Laura rubs her thumb very softly over the light purple mark she's left on the right side of his chest, as if might soothe away the proof of his decision to cushion her fall.

She's in hell, but the company could be worse.

  
*

So it's like this:

She does not feel holy unless she is pouring herself into it, arching for Sahkmet's teeth or easing beneath Baal's palms.

So it's like this:

Laura is dead and Persephone runs through her in black and in gold.

So it's like this:

Still clicking her fingers for the fire, _goddammit_.

  
*

_There were two girls in hell. Hated. Brilliant. But not dead. Not yet._

  
*

So it's like this:

Two ex-gods in the bodies of ex-children do not die and do not burn but lowly glow like curling embers. Laura touches Luci's - no, Eleanor's - lip with her thumb, pulls down on it a touch, and that's holy, maybe, the way it yields but doesn't, not really.

So it's like this:

The bags under Laura's eyes suggest her best years are behind her, and Eleanor's fresh face promises the worst is yet to come.

So it's like this:

Laura takes the cigarette from between Eleanor's fingers and grinds it into the ground. "Those thing's'll kill you."

Eleanor smiles, no less sharp, but edging on something nameless and startlingly close to mature. "Baby, we were always fucking doomed."

*

Laura bites her tongue so hard the first time they sleep together that her kisses must be tainted with copper.

Eleanor claims her tongue retains it's silver tip, so maybe they simply cannot taste each other over their mouthfuls of betraying metal.

She crawls her way down Laura's body, nothing like performing but everything like she's studied this hard, how to deconstruct someone, how to make them ephemeral beneath your touch. Laura's hands find purchase in Eleanor's hair and that is something she never dared fantasise before - in the wastelands of before, this would have felt like sacrilege. Laura fists her hand and pulls tight, just to watch the girl stumble, just to hear her make a noise that is as inelegant and human as Laura feels. She's studied this too.

Eleanor moans and it buzzes through Laura's skin. They are sweaty, slipping on each other's fingers, scratching and wanting as if trying to recover lost time in the creases of their skin. It's not like Sakhmet, but Laura doesn't know why she thought it would be.

(It has a touch of Baphomet, but Laura would rather push that aside, would rather sink into the moment that pick apart what parts of her are most responsible for her Cartwright curse.)

Eleanor's mouth is hot and quick against her, manifesting the best of her fantasies as she flicks her tongue against Lara's clit, pointed, just the right amount of rough.

She keeps tugging at her hair, keeps making her as unkempt and uncoalesced as Laura feels, her thumbs smoothing across Eleanor's forehead, her eyebrows, her eyelids. She arches into the gentle touch. Definitely not like Sakhmet.

When Laura comes it is not divine. It's earthy, it's real, she never leaves the moment nor the focus of Eleanor's true-blue eyes. When Eleanor crawls back up Laura kisses her, not minding the taste, soothing her fingertips down the other girl's spine, and that's good, that grounding comfort.

_So much of it was for you, or about you_. Godhood was it's most appealing when it wore Luci's face. When was the last time she was not embalmed in her - her fandom, her innocence, her death, her ghost, and now, this, beneath her like a shadow and still trying to consume what's left over?

Of all the thousand things she doesn't say to the pale expanse of Eleanor's back, this is what roars the loudest.

  
*

So it's like this:

.  
.  
.

And so it goes.


End file.
